On Monday morning, a worried Ms Mirriam Mabe of No. 6844 in Khut-song Extension 3 pointed to the huge sinkhole that had caved in on the small yard next to hers. Luckily, there is no house on the property. Although there is a shack there, no one seemed to have been around when the sinkhole caved in. Mabe’s yard has started cracking badly, however.
Other residents, like Mr Chucku Kerileng, are just as worried about the latest development.
Unlike most other sinkholes that have developed in this area over the past years, the new sinkhole is so deep that one cannot see the bottom of it, looking from the side. By Monday morning, water was still leaking into the new sinkhole from a broken municipal water pipe.
The residents suspect that the latest sinkhole was caused by a water or sewage leak from the failing municipal infrastructure in the area.
Although the Merafong City Local Municipality has indicated in the past that residents should be moved from Extension 3 because the ground is not safe, only a few have been given new homes.
This leaves the others vulnerable to having their homes destroyed and possibly even losing their lives. “The fact that a sinkhole caved in here is really tragic,” said the area’s new ward councillor, Mr Ernest Tibane.
He says, for now, only the Mabe family and their neighbours on the other side of the sinkhole will be moved.
Unfortunately, the municipality can only provide low-cost houses for the affected families. Tibane expects this to be a problem.
